


Untitled Helplessness #4

by SecondStarfall (beantiger)



Series: The Second Starfall Stories [44]
Category: Original Work
Genre: (But the animal is an illusion so YMMV), 1800s-era Tech, Angels, Animal Death, Art, Attempt at Humor, Birds, Bittersweet Ending, Blood and Injury, Creepy, Drunkenness, F/F, Fairy Tale Elements, Fairy Tale Style, Familiars, Fantasy, Forests, Gen, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character, Lesbian Character, Mild Horror, No Lesbians Die, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Painting, Prophecy, Self-Esteem Issues, Siblings, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-09
Updated: 2020-06-09
Packaged: 2021-03-04 05:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24628708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/beantiger/pseuds/SecondStarfall
Summary: “I come with death,” said the bearded vulture now gripping the sill. “Your sister is in love. Your youngest sister is in love and there will be bones to eat."***A young painter tries to find inspiration, but a drunken witch complicates it all.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s), Original Female Character/Original Female Character
Series: The Second Starfall Stories [44]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1582975
Comments: 2
Kudos: 5





	Untitled Helplessness #4

**Author's Note:**

> **SUGGESTED REREADING:** This takes place around the same time as ["The Underflames Seemed To Brighten"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/23418682) but a few years before ["The Length of Eternity."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211657) Taaron only knows she's in love here because she's drunk, and forgets it for a long time after. As one does.
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨

**1.**

Over past the True Witchwood in the territories of the Sovereignty, there used to live a witch-princess who possessed an astonishing talent in painting scenes of terror. Kalkora Lattar was her name. The scene in my study of the two-headed dove leaking blood in a woman’s hand—the one above my desk—that’s hers.

It brings joy to the heart, doesn’t it?

**2.**

At the time of this story, however, the princess Kalkora Lattar was just twenty-two years old. She hadn’t basked in the light of inspiration in months, and so she hadn’t produced anything in months, either. Because she raged about it in the most obnoxious way possible to people who couldn’t do a thing about it, we have the dove, the blood, the woman’s hand. _Untitled Helplessness #4._

Come to think of it, we also have this painting because of a drunken suitor. And an injured vulture. And quite a bit of yelling. And—

Ah, we’ll get there.

**3.**

You see, the witch-princess resided with her eleven sisters and two mothers—the witch-queens—in a magnificent villa known as the Brightest Manor. There, bursts of magic flew every which-way like wild firecrackers, and familiars were as common as stars. The natural light and color of her day-to-day life would have seemed impossibly brilliant to you, but had only succeeded in blessing this princess with a penchant for theatrics.

(You know the type: she cried often and raucously as if the survival of the very world itself depended on her tears.)

Let me be clear, though, and fair, too. Kalkora Lattar would not have attracted any attention otherwise, despite her talent. This princess was one of the middle children, which meant she bore the curse of parental hand-waving. She also could not produce a _syntax_ —what those mystical folk called their witchcraft. In fact, she was the only sister among the twelve who had no magic at all. 

Knowing this, none of what will happen in this story will surprise you.

**4.**

So, as I said, Kalkora fumed about her artistic block in the most unpleasant way she could muster. It went like this:

As her younger sisters practiced their syntaxes in the Manor’s garden, Kalkora would lay on a bench behind them to opine, "Ugh, but the _lighting._ The lighting doesn’t work."

As her older sisters discussed politics in the common room, Kalkora would fling herself over the glass table between them all and moan: "Ugh, but can't you all pose with more drama?"

As her mothers sat upon the Moth-wing Throne and sought to ease the suffering of visiting supplicants, Kalkora would line up behind all the commoners. And when she met her mothers at the front of the line, she would cry out, "Ugh, but the color and contrast in this place is just dreadful—"

Then, the Manor itself would coalesce into something tangible and drag her away, for it was alive, too, and tired of her.

**5.**

Theirs was a family that had breakfast together every Sunday in the dining hall. It was the one time the Manor settled into peace.

Kalkora despised it with all her being. 

“Nobody ever considers _my_ feelings,” she murmured to herself repeatedly over porridge.

As the only daughter without a syntax, she figured that she was less than dirt in her family’s eyes. Certainly her mothers and elder sisters treated her with the polite dignity generally reserved for someone on their deathbed. Certainly her younger sisters pretended to value her wisdom from time to time. At her core, however, she knew they would only allow her to stay at the Manor as long as she contributed something of value.

(Whether or not this was the truth is irrelevant. Kalkora believed it, and so it was.)

Her _something_ was her art. Despite its portrayals of viscera, it had brought her much acclaim, at least until potential buyers and exhibitors experienced her in person...

Regardless, Kalkora understood her own talent at rendering guts and livers and death. The idea of failure loomed over her, its teeth bared, its breath hot. She needed to feel the spark of creation again, and no one was giving her any support at all.

As porcelain and silver clinked together, something snapped open in Kalkora’s mind.

"If none of you are going to help me solve this," Kalkora wailed, "and I don't know why I ever thought you rubes would ever help me with anything—I will find my new muse myself. I refuse to be helpless! I _refuse!_ "

To say Kalkora stormed away from the table would not be accurate. She tripped over the leg of her chair twice, to the notice of absolutely no one. Then she whisked herself out of the dining hall like a spring drizzle of little consequence.

**6.**

In her chambers, Kalkora paced until her feet ached. As usual, her mouth had written a law she could not enforce, so to speak. She’d never lacked inspiration in her life, and she didn’t know where to begin with the search.

Angry panic boiled over in her belly for hours until she heard a fluttering at her window. A waft of rot touched Kalkora’s nostrils. 

“I come with death,” said the bearded vulture now gripping the sill. “Your sister is in love. Your youngest sister is in love and there will be bones to eat."

"And lost what little mind she has, no doubt. Right, Meat?" Kalkora asked of the bird, practically rocking on her heels. Vultures do not gossip as a rule; they consume enough of the world’s detritus as it is. If Meat had something to say, you see, that was remarkable, even if it was only a roundabout way of getting food.

"Yes,” Meat said. “She has sent away her nanny—she has forsaken all sense. Your mothers locked her away in her room to discipline her. Before the end of this there will be bones. That is all that will be left, and all for me."

(Technically, this nanny had taken care of Kalkora and the rest of the girls as well. They’d been in the family for years. Decades, even. Like a goldfish, however, Kalkora forgot a person as soon as they left her peripheral vision. She didn’t even realize who was missing at the breakfast table.)

“How juicy,” Kalkora said. She pressed her hands together in glee as colors and contrast swirled in her mind. “Tell me more.”

"Her constant companion is planning to come for her as we speak. Another witch from down the way in the town of Kar Tor.”

“So someone thinks she’s been abducted and intends to break into the Manor and save her," Kalkora replied. “A suitor. No, a capital-S Suitor. Now that’s a _scene._ ”

Kirra, the youngest of the witch-sisters at just sixteen, already displayed just the right mixture of their mothers' features to attract fervent attention wherever she traipsed about—not that she ever noticed. To Kalkora she had all the brains of a frog and all the beauty of water itself, stupid yet ethereal. I have to admit that Kalkora may have judged her youngest sister accurately, although that’s a tale for another time.

“Something like that,” Meat said. “Before the end of this—"

"Yes yes, someone will get stabbed or whatever. But how will it look, Meat? Can you see it in your mind's eye? What palette? What mood?"

On this, the vulture had nothing to say, which was his right. He wasn’t her familiar. Only witches had familiars. Still, Kalkora had found him as a hatchling, and, over time, they’d come to the sort of mutual understanding that two schoolyard bullies might. 

Especially if those bullies have the same target.

**7.**

That night, Meat soared away from the Brightest Manor with moon-rimmed feathers and Kalkora dangling from his talons. They criss-crossed over the local murk of pines and firs and hemlocks, conversing in harsh whispers about the Suitor.

“She is not herself,” Meat said. “She, too, has forsaken all sense. Ale has made her brave.”

The more Kalkora considered this, the more fearless she became, too. Pining and yearning transforms all young folks into the most extreme versions of themselves. Living among eleven extremely single sisters, Kalkora knew that intimately. She thought: _Strong or not, drunk or not, this Suitor’s daft as all get-out. Who else would stumble through the forest of the witch-queens at night?_

Then she shivered with excitement. 

“Do you know at all,” Kalkora said, “what she can do? Is she dangerous to us specifically?—and yes, I know asking about a syntax is impolite, but I’m not a witch. Consequently, I can act as impolitely as I please. Especially in the name of art. And my reputation.”

“Consequently,” Meat replied. Then he simply said, “She removes.”

Below, Kalkora spied human movement off the road that pierced through the True Witchwood. It was about three in the morning, and a summery three in the morning at that: with a little squinting, she saw just as well as she would in the light of the sun. She and Meat spiraled closer.

The Suitor panted as she penetrated the shadows between the trees, a determined knot in her brow. Her gait seemed unsteady, and she was sweating profusely. Her hair—lavender like a newborn dawn—stuck helter-skelter to her forehead. 

“Oh, she _is_ drunk,” Kalkora grumbled. (All witches grow hair of an unnatural color, you see, and that’s how Kalkora identified her so easily.) “Let’s give her a little push.”

Kalkora and Meat floated down.

“You, Suitor!” she cried out. “If you think you’ll get through the True Witchwood without coming to your untimely death, you are sorely mistaken.”

“There will be bones,” Meat declared. “Nothing left but bones to eat.”

“Or I suppose,” Kalkora yelled down, “your death would be quite timely, considering how expected it would be! Some of the trees here have poor temperaments and a taste for children.”

Her muse looked up, whipped out a small nothing of a knife from her pocket, then loosened. She slipped the blade back into the satchel at her side a bit too slowly, a bit too uneasily. Nothing about her seemed particularly powerful—Kalkora would have told you that, and it is the truth. Even beyond the drunkenness, she had an awkward aura about her, like most adolescent girls.

Yet Kalkora only grew more fascinated. She wanted to capture this Suitor on canvas, or perhaps she felt she _had_ to, which amounted to the same thing. And so, unfortunately for everybody involved in this tale, Kalkora remained.

“And—have you heard of the Mount Goatsage angel?” Kalkora said, wishing she had a third hand to pinch her nose. She could smell the drink on the Suitor’s breath from a few yards away. “It is dead, very dead, my mothers killed it years before you or I were born. But its lieutenants and minions still patrol the wood, looking to root out witches like you, oh brave-but-witless suitor.”

“Witches like you,” Meat intoned. 

The Suitor simply stared at her. Kalkora thought it was a very ugly expression. In combination with the Suitor’s too-wide shoulders, faded overalls, and generally gormless aspect, she didn’t seem like much. To be fair, though, most of us wouldn’t look particularly inspiring after a few mugs of bad ale.

“You’re...Kalkora,” slurred the Suitor. “And that’s—your bird. Kirra told me all about you. She told me you lie...a lot.” 

While Kalkora recovered from shock, the Suitor continued stumbling forward into the night.

**8.**

“Well, that wasn’t very interesting,” Kalkora said as she and Meat circumnavigated the forest again. They stayed low to the ground, sweeping over the juniper that covered the earth. “Now we’ve lost her. How do you lose a drunk child?”

In the distance, miles away past the crooked firs and tempestuous pines, the silver on the Brightest Manor’s twelve spires flickered like a soldier tapping out code. Silence had fallen over the True Witchwood.

 _How long until dawn?_ Kalkora thought in the space of that calm. She refused to face her family with nothing to show for it. Determination rang in her heart—because yes, reader, even women like Kalkora have hearts, as certainly as every thinking being has a dream. She told herself that she would paint again and it would be _triumphant._

Suddenly, Meat said: “I smell steel—no, not steel. Steel but backwards—swords coming undone. Peace that isn’t peace—”

White feathers, paler than maggot-skin, swirled around their heads. Within seconds, a hundred golden-beaked doves fell upon them, their coos thunderous, their bites piercing Kalkora’s limbs. Her body roared with immediate agony on all sides and from within. As she kicked, weakness began to overtake her.

Even the most virtuous among us would never want to encounter the forgotten soldiers of the angels. No matter the nature of their attacks, those beasts burn you from the inside out, and they penetrate as deep as the spirit. It is temporary, but effective. As pain seeps into every nook in your consciousness—as you feel you are becoming a living injury—you also remember every loved one that ever wronged you. Every time a friend merely stared at you, helpless, when you asked for aid.

All of this entered Kalkora’s mind, and yet through the veil of it a rational part of her cried out—

“Gods-damned fucking _angels!_ ”

—as she plummeted head-first into the ground.

Admirable, really.

**9.**

Women like Kalkora have hearts, and women like Kalkora have dreams, and women like Kalkora are also very lucky, in my experience.

The witch-princess lived, first because she only fell a few yards down into a bed of juniper, and second because she landed on both her satchel and Meat. Above her, the swarm of doves vanished over the forest canopy like glittering, feathered wasps. Their coos sharpened to a small, quiet point, and the Witchwood once again settled into a hush.

Bleeding and sore and half-conscious, Kalkora lay face-down in the dark. She thought, distantly, _I bet I looked fabulous falling from that height. Summer moon at my back, eyes aglow with rage, ancient celestial servants feeding on my soft bits. Glorious._

A gurgle rose up from underneath her. She rolled.

“Meat—oh, Meat,” Kalkora said, and through exhaustion crawled towards him, her hands and arms caked in dirt and streaked with red. He looked abnormally lopsided as he got to his feet and bristled in alarm. But he was alive. Gratitude poured through Kalkora, at least until she glimpsed a daub of lavender hair.

The Suitor stumbled, gasping for breath, through a blackberry bush towards them. Thorns picked at her exposed arms. She collapsed, swearing, not two yards from Meat and Kalkora. 

Or rather, just Kalkora, because Meat had fled on foot like a startled, mostly-dead chicken. 

I suppose in a way he _was_ a startled, mostly-dead chicken.

**10.**

Trauma often passed through Kalkora Lattar like water, unless she could figure out a way to use it to her advantage. It was one of her other, lesser talents.

So: as she lie there among the juniper, her muscles spasmed. Her wounds began to scab. She listened to the Suitor snoring on the ground. She stared at her surroundings under the moonlight. The trees where she had fallen clustered together so tightly—and grew so high—she couldn’t see the Manor’s spires over their peaks anymore. Everything came through to her filtered and shadowed for about five minutes, as if she experienced her own life from down a well.

Then, Kalkora growled, bringing all into focus again. As I said: like water.

“Oh, you horrid, dense little girl. You’re going to die out here. And my bird. And me, too. Before I create my life’s work, oh—”

The Suitor hiccuped into consciousness. “I heard a scream. I came...I came running.”

Kalkora wanted to say, _I’m hurt, too, you ferocious idiot,_ but her overwhelming concern for Meat, and for her art, silenced her own thoughts. Instead, she said, “You’re, what, sixteen? The eldest of my two mothers is over one hundred, and she is a young woman for a witch. You will not make it through these woods."

Her own words surged through her, much like a good orator’s would, and she gathered up the energy to tower over the Suitor despite her aching body. 

“My—syntax,” mumbled the Suitor into the dirt. “I can’t heal your bird, but—I can calm him, long enough for you to get him some help. I can take the panic on for a moment...maybe you could tell your mothers that—”

“How heroic of you. How positively saintly. Martyr-like, even. What’s in it for you? What do you do, out in Kar Tor? You are from Kar Tor, yes? How did you even get this far?”

“I’m, er—a silversmith’s apprentice. I’m not a very good one,” the Suitor slurred. In her one open eye, Kalkora glimpsed a tinge of restrained desperation. It was the kind of expression you’d see on an anxious dog, or someone wrapped in the throes of love and heroism and (in Kalkora’s opinion) other such garbage. "And...carriage. I took a carriage. Then walked out..."

 _Little girl,_ thought Kalkora, _wants to rise above her circumstances. Little girl doesn’t give a hot damn about the greater good unless it earns her an inch of clout and a pair of breasts. Typical._

She said, “Well. You’re finding my fucking bird. And then you are going to do something interesting for me and I am going to sketch it _because I am not going home without something to show for it._ ” 

As was tradition, Kalkora wept, suddenly and awfully. Her yowls grew loud enough to rival those of a cat in estrus. For all her histrionics, Kalkora truly believed every word she said; for all her calls for attention, she truly felt, deep in her heart, that she was alone and always would be, surrounded by a beauty she could not properly capture.

**11.**

The two dragged each other across the landscape of the True Witchwood in search of Meat, switching off as one or the other fell into despair or the broody haze of ale.

When it was her turn to lead the charge, Kalkora had much to say:

“You witches are all the same, all boring, dreadfully boring, not even dying or trying to get anyone killed in a pretty way—all the same.”

“You’re not a witch,” said the Suitor, plainly.

“Astute! I have no syntax; my hair is as blonde as a horse’s mane. Did your little Kirra ever tell you why it’s called a ‘syntax,’ by the way?—because it’s how your body talks in a world it isn’t meant to be in.”

“I was just trying to help—”

“Witches are abnormal. Did Kirra ever tell you that? They’re flaws in the great portrait we call the universe. Every witch that’s born isn’t meant to be here in this world. That’s why angels hate you—you’re impurities, every one of you, always trying to convince the world you’re normal and natural but you aren’t. And yet you still manage to be _boring!_ ”

“That’s—a lie,” the Suitor managed. “Kirra told me you lie a lot—”

“Everyone’s waiting for me to make a mistake. Can you even imagine? At least you have magic, you wicked girl. What do I have?—oh, Meat!”

They arrived by a riverbed, next to which a lump of feathers had curled up, shaking. Before Kalkora could react, the Suitor rushed forth, wrapping Meat up in her arms. His eyes had glazed over in a fog of panic. Even in the dark Kalkora noticed that. Rage and fear clutched her all at once.

“I can imagine,” said the Suitor lamely. The stench of bad ale had grown so large as to feel like a presence. “I told you, please, I can...I can make things better for just a second. And you’ll remember it. I can numb the pain. Make it go away. You can bring him home to someone who can help, and bring me, too.”

“Bones for me,” Meat whispered. His tongue looked dry.

The sound of whistling lilted through the air, eerie in the silent forest. Kalkora realized she was breathing hard through her teeth, trying not to scream. She let herself fall into memories of Meat as a chick no bigger than her palm. At the time she found him, she was maybe six or seven, and not yet aware of her shortcomings. She’d scooped him out of a unicorn’s corpse in the True Witchwood and brought him back to the Manor to sketch him from all angles. 

And she tried, also, not to think about the aftermath. Her eldest sister lectured her about digging around with the dead and the hurt, about talking to birds—vultures especially—with whom she did not have a pact. But the unicorn’s silvery flesh had been beautiful, and the tiny vulture Meat had been more beautiful still. In Kalkora’s young mind, nothing else in creation could come close.

“Do what you must before I shove you into that river,” Kalkora said.

**12.**

With Meat spread out on the ground, the Suitor clasped his talons. Burns and scars marred her hands, yet her touch seemed gentle.

 _Oh, what a real brave hero, helping someone with their little birdie so you can have your girlfriend and meet her very royal parents,_ Kalkora thought, getting low to the ground to watch closely. But it was a thought tinged with anxiety, and so, by its nature, insincere.

The Suitor’s eyes rolled back. She cringed and whimpered. Relief rippled across vulture-flesh; Kalkora could _see_ Meat growing more comfortable. 

“The fuck,” Kalkora said. It wasn’t very impressive, but it was strange.

_She removes._

Rapid-fire coughs rang through the air like ricocheting bullets. The Suitor blinked, shivered, grit her teeth. A single groan emerged from her, as well as one of Meat’s feathers, dangling from her mouth by a thread of saliva.

“The fuck,” Kalkora repeated.

Meat himself swept to his feet and glanced around, confused. He walked in an uneven circle as if one of his legs had fallen asleep. When his gaze met Kalkora’s, he blinked, slowly, contentedly.

“Fuck,” Kalkora said again, and cried into her fists.

“L-like I said,” the Suitor managed. She looked over at Kalkora. “He’s not...healed. I just turned off the pain...long enough for you to get back to the Manor. There are things snapped in two inside and—I don’t know. I d-don’t know enough about birds. I—”

A white feather landed beside Meat’s on the ground, and then another, and then another. Gold glittered all around them.

The forest burst open with coos and the beating of tiny wings.

**13.**

If you predicted that the doves would return, you were correct. In fact, this was the last time they would return anywhere.

What happened was not quite the stuff of poetic recounting, however.

Essentially, as the swarm descended upon them, the Suitor, still moderately drunk, faltered back as soon as she stood up. It was the most important of the birds who cushioned her fall: the nexus, the brain of the flock.

Angelic creations are not true living beasts, but rather facsimiles of such; all the doves dropped to the ground at once, deprived of their mind. Even in the moonlight, their beaks glimmered like pennies at the bottom of a fountain. Kalkora, who hadn’t had the energy to react to much of anything in the last few seconds except with expletives, thought it looked as if gravity had taken its final revenge.

The Suitor examined what she’d fallen upon. Unlike the other doves, it had two heads and four wings—or was, perhaps, two doves attached at the rear. Like a moth deprived of its powder it fluttered uselessly, weakly, in the Suitor’s hand.

“Good show,” Kalkora said after a poignant pause. She rolled her eyes. “Give me that.”

It bled against Kalkora’s palm from all four of its eyes. Slick red trickled down her wrist and the flat of her arm, congealing into silver.

“Bones and flesh for me,” Meat interjected, a dark enthusiasm bubbling in his voice. 

“Gods,” Kalkora said, sniffling. “Gods, Meat, you could have been more specific.” She grinned, and as she did, she squeezed as hard as she could. A brief heat shuddered across her skin and cooled. Each grounded dove burned, and the nexus in her hand did as well—feathers dissipating into nothingness, flesh into ash.

Even at twenty-two, she still felt exactly the same about the dead and the hurt. 

In the end, indeed, only the doves’ bones remained, scattered along the ground. Kalkora let ribs and femurs drop from her grasp. Meat clumsily set to eating.

“I’m too drunk for this, I think,” the Suitor admitted.

**14.**

“The Manor’s alive,” Kalkora said, wiping her own blood all over the Suitor’s cheeks. “It tastes and hears and all that but it doesn’t see—here, take my shoes, that’ll help. Bring Meat with you and it’ll think you’re me. And get back on the damned road and don’t be stupid. If you die it’ll be on my conscience and my conscience is very weak.”

The Suitor breathed in. “My name is—”

“Don’t care,” Kalkora interrupted. “I suppose I’ll find out when you and Kirra elope or whatever like a bunch of religious nutters. Her tower is the third from the left. The Manor will bring you up there if you walk towards it.”

“How do I know I can—trust you? Kirra says—”

“I lie, I lie, yes, yes, whatever. I may not be a witch, I may not be held by the Law of witches, but my mothers are witches and they would hold me to honesty. Alright? Now: tower, third from the left. Kirra. Just don’t talk while you’re there.”

“How did you know I loved...I love...”

Kalkora squeezed the Suitor’s cheeks between her fingers. “Gods, with the questions! Don’t talk. You have a state secret. How to get into the Brightest Manor? Tch! Thousands have died to discover it and never have.” She helped Meat up into the Suitor’s arms. “And you’re obvious. Suitors are always obvious. Drunks are always obvious. Girls who love girls are always obvious.”

When the Suitor closed her mouth, her teeth clacked together audibly.

“My lovely mothers will forget about Kirra’s punishment within the week, I assure you. The wonders of being the youngest of twelve, eh? So don’t bail her out. That will not go over well, and I imagine Kar Tor would end up in flames at the end of it, which would look lovely, but would not be grand for you. Say hello, do whatever it is that love-drunk kids do, then leave. You’ll have your chance to meet my mothers some other, better day.”

The Suitor nodded, and Kalkora finally loosed her grip on the girl’s face.

“Now go. Meat will know what to do when he gets there. I have a sister who does the whole...healing thing,” Kalkora concluded. “The eldest.”

“Is she kind?”

“I hate her. Shut up and move. And if you’re eaten by a tree I’ll raise you from the dead just to kill you again. I wasn’t lying about that one.”

Kalkora didn’t bother to watch her go. She knew the Suitor would do the right thing and always would, if for the wrong reasons. _Fame,_ thought Kalkora. _Memory. Reputation. Leave the world different than you found it and all that. Irritating._ The girl was too similar to her for comfort; she knew she would never be able to turn the Suitor into her muse. But she was still weeping and had been, silently, while giving the Suitor direction. 

_Bones and flesh. An angel’s dove dead and bleeding in the hand, sparks of flame emerging from its pinions..._

“Witches,” Kalkora said to herself, shaking her head. She had taken her sketchbook from her satchel and begun drawing, pushing through the soreness in her skin and muscles and bare feet. “Ugh! Witches are obvious.”

**15.**

So ends the tale of _Untitled Helplessness #4._

What, are you not content? 

Ah, fine.

The Suitor made it to the Manor safely, and found Kirra Lattar as beautiful as ever. Kirra found her drunk, but wonderful, and not at all foolish for trekking through the True Witchwood on the high of alcohol, because as mentioned, Kirra was stupid, yet ethereal. They did have their own happy ending, though it would take a few decades to get there. Another tale, another time.

Meat? Meat had broken near every little bone in his wings. He mended well under the authoritarian eye of Kalkora’s eldest sister, though he never flew again. Alas, not all stories end in joy and celebration. But his grounded life suited him, because the tastiest things tended to die in the dirt, at any rate.

And Kalkora, our friend Kalkora—she created _Untitled Helplessness #4._ The whole series depicts the events of that night, you see, in all its gore. Glorious, really. Dead doves and near-dead vultures, flames and the darkness of the True Witchwood. Of all Kalkora’s paintings, though, it is probably the only set that her public despised. I’m told she threw a tantrum about it, mostly because everyone expected her to do so. She had a reputation to uphold, after all.

But in her heart (for Kalkora has a heart) she was simply glad she’d made something again. 

“Whatever, right?” was her common refrain in those days, punctuated with overwrought sighs. “People will come around. They always do, unfortunately."

**Author's Note:**

> As always, leave a comment or a kudos if you enjoyed this! ✨
> 
> ✨ [[see the full SecStar timeline](https://secondstarfall.com/index.php/Official_Timeline) | [check out the SecStar wiki](https://secondstarfall.com/)] ✨
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S COMMENTARY:** As of June 2020, this is the longest SecStar piece to date, and the first one with f-bombs. Kalkora would be pleased.
> 
> Remember how [Taaron doesn't drink and all that?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24211657) This story, which takes place a few years prior to "The Length of Eternity," explains why.
> 
> The Lattars are very weird and try their best, ish, and I hope to explore them more soon. Kalkora's not even the tip of the witchy iceberg. Kirra's mothers have a whole epic to themselves I have to write someday, and Kirra's eldest sister Rilka (briefly mentioned here, as the healer) is one to watch out for. There's a reason Kirra spends most of her time in Kar Tor with Taaron (and no one at the Manor really notices she's gone).
> 
> I hope it's funny. It was meant to be _Discworld-_ style funny. I had to cut a lot of the funny tangents out, so now it's just like, mildly comedic horror. ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


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